Manchester Officials Credit Collaboration With Drop In School Arrests

MANCHESTER — — Arrests at Manchester High School and Illing Middle School have plummeted in the past three years, and officials credit a collaborative effort that seeks alternatives to the criminal justice system.

In the 2010-11 school year, police made 137 arrests at the high school. That dropped to 30 arrests in 2011-12 and 21 through December of this school year. At the middle school, arrests decreased from 30 in 2010-11 to 23 the following year and only 4 in the first half of the current school year.

The downward trajectory is mostly due to a program called Manchester Agencies, Police and Schools (MAPS), Police Chief Marc Montminy said at the board of education meeting Monday.

Launched in the summer of 2011, MAPS gathered school leaders, police, juvenile justice system representatives and others to discuss methods of dealing with students' unruly behavior without resorting to the criminal courts. Development of the program folllowed a gang-related hallway brawl at the high school in December 2010 that resulted in multiple arrests and expulsions of 15 students.

The MAPS approach has proven to be effective, Montminy said, and has changed the role of police officers assigned to the schools. Instead of "the hammer that falls on these kids," school resource officers now are more able to serve as the mentors they were meant to be, he said.

The majority of criminal charges filed against high school students, Montminy wrote in a 2012 report, were the result of fights, and the most common charge was breach of peace. In the past, interim Superintendent Richard Kisiel has said, the high school staff was too quick to resort to arrests.

MAPS created a more progressive approach that stressed alternatives to arrests while also ensuring school safety, Kisiel has said. Teachers and administrators try to find ways to deal with bad behavior that benefits the student, the school and the community, he said.

Charges against students at the high school in the first half of this school year include several for breach of peace, including two involving weapons, possession of marijuana, one for possession of narcotics (oxycodone), one for sixth-degree larceny and two for third-degree assault.

The key to whether a student should be arrested, Montminy said at the school board meeting Monday, is criminal intent. Often in the past, he said, arrests were the result of "unaddressed behaviors" instead of criminal acts.